


Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset (DIEGO HARGREEVES)

by RockWithItWriting



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Body Language, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Language Deprivation, Stuttering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockWithItWriting/pseuds/RockWithItWriting
Summary: cricket gets hurt on a mission, and diego's there to remedy the pain. the physical pain, at least.//short fic using my oc: cricket and an au that's less painful





	1. Chapter 1

She tries to focus on anything but Diego. He’s dressing her wound - which is bleeding pretty badly - and neither of them are speaking. She’s worried that he’s angry because the set of his brow is heavy and his jaw is moving like he’s chewing over words he wants to say without a stutter.

They’ve been working on it, the stutter. Well, not his. Hers. She’s worried that she won’t be able to speak tonight without it, or that she’ll flatline and forget all of the language that Five has sat her down and made her memorize. She doesn’t move when he pours the rubbing alcohol into the gunshot wound even though everything in her is telling her to squirm away from the pain. Diego doesn’t seem to notice, but lately he’s been noticing her less and less.

Cricket’s kind of surprised he’s cleaning her wound, but Diego knows her and she knows herself: it probably would have gone uncleaned for a day while she drank the pain into numbness.

He wraps her arm securely and then, not even taking a second to look her in the eyes, stalks from the room. Cricket ignores the pull of pain in her arm and wraps her arms around her torso. She lets the fear creep in, like a bruise or a fog rolling in. It comes from all sides and settles over her skin, absorbing into her bloodstream. Diego is mad at her. She’s not sure if she can handle that. Of course, like everything else life has thrown at her, she does.

She’s unusually silent for the next couple of days as Diego ignores her, too afraid her broken words will give off some sort of pathetic aura. She knows, of course, her stutter isn’t her fault and it doesn’t mean she’s broken but they’ll know. The other eight in the house will know something is wrong and the gnawing anxiety is too loud in her head to mull over what she wants to say. Cricket also decides, at some point, that she’s not just anxious but afraid. Old habits die hard and she flickers out of sight when she hears Diego’s footsteps approaching, holding her breath and making herself as small as possible. That, unfortunately, doesn’t go unnoticed. Vanya is the first to notice, because of course she is. 

After Cricket came to the rescue, showing the Hargreeves family why their father called her Number Eight on a sliding scale supposedly composed of one through seven, Vanya had stuck to her side. Their powers were similar - not the same nor controlled the same way - but Cricket helped in a way that the journals never could. She helped Klaus, too, and Ben as they tried to work together to unlock potential. They still train even though the world lives in fear of the White Violin and slowly, but surely, Vanya gains control. Slowly, but surely, Cricket begins losing control.

It happens in training first when Vanya breaks the silence of opening meditation in favor of interrogation. “Cricket, what’s going on?” Her voice is soft, as always, and it makes her chest hurt in the same way that Diego’s silence does, “You got hurt on that last mission, but something else happened.” Her heart is pounding and she’s focusing on her breathing. It’s a trick for anxiety, but her powers are connected in the same way. Slowly she begins to feel her body fall away, closing her eyes as energy pulses around her. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. It’s okay, Cricket, really.” When Vanya tries to lay a comforting hand on Cricket’s shoulder it passes right through and then, suddenly, the girl is gone from sight.

She gets up and runs from the training room, passing right through Diego who doesn’t seem bothered at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Klaus notices next, or maybe Ben does. Either way the overzealous man corners Cricket in her room, leaving her pulse rocketing and her eyes wide. He poses in the doorway, lips pursed and eyes kohl-lined. Ben, who’s been more present and visible the more sober Klaus gets, stands behind his brother. They both look grim but Kalus is grim in a theatrical way. In his own way. “Cricky, Cricky, Cricky. Or should I call you Bridgette?”

She shakes her head, standing from the bed and shuffling toward the window. She chokes on his name, pulse running too rampant and uneven to get a grip on her powers.

“You’ve made dear old Diego cranky, Cricket. That just won’t do!” He falls dramatically on her bed and pulls a joint from - where does the joint come from? She relaxes when he lights it because maybe, if the Gods still have grace for her, he’ll drop whatever he wants to talk about. “I’m not sure what you did, but you should undo it. He’s so stoic again, even when Mommy makes smiley-face pancakes!” He grins over the joint and takes a long pull after he’s done baby-talking. “And he loves his Mommy.”

He’s making fun of Diego, she realizes. He’s trying to get a rise out of her and it’s working. She’s defensive and Ben is smirking at her - everyone in the room is on the same page. She can’t leave, not without getting past Ben which is borderline impossible. She noticed it when he first came in, following Klaus. The floorboards creaked under his weight. Klaus, who seems strung out at the best of times and incoherent at the worst of times, was more sober than ever.

That means Ben is more real than ever, and her only escape from the hell conversation is through the window or to settle her pulse enough to fall apart. “You know who else he loves?” Klaus sits up and ashes his joint to the side, grinning like the cat who got the cream. “He loves his Kit, oh his wittle Cricket. He sure does. Do you want to tell me what happened to make Mommy and Daddy fight?”

Ben sighs but doesn’t speak, Klaus pouting. It’s the idea, the insane idea that Diego loves her, that makes her speak for the first time in three days. “Nuh… N-!” She balls her hands into fists at her side, forcing the words out through the stutter. “No, he duh-doesn’t!” She would have liked to punctuate her sentence with his name but out of everyone - besides maybe Pogo and Diego - Klaus has the most difficult name for her to master when she’s flustered. And flustered she is.

In fact, Klaus would have kept making fun of her and egging her on if Ben hadn’t picked up on the fogginess of her green eyes, the way her bottom lip trembled. She’s almost thirty but she’s sensitive like she’s thirteen. Ben holds out a hand to stop Klaus from speaking, “Dude.”

And she rushes from the room, the repetitive drip-drip-drip of tears just enough to give her an edge up on her powers and the frame of mine she needs to disappear. She just wants to disappear. She wonders if anyone but Klaus, Vanya, and Ben would notice.


	3. Chapter 3

She’s training with Vanya again, breathing heavily with her hair tied back. Vanya is strong, but she’s Number Seven for a reason. Cricket knows she could very well be Number Seven if Vanya had a little bit more training, and maybe that day will come.

But Cricket has more power, if only for just a little bit longer.

She bought Vanya a tuning fork, after checking with her to see that it was okay, and they worked on finding surfaces in the heat of battle to hit it against. She teaches Vanya to focus on her internal sounds: air in the lungs, pulse, creaking of joints as they age.

She hits the padded wall of the training room, back and arm burning, and thinks that maybe Vanya has usurped her as Number Eight. But she’s filled with anger, burning and boiling, and hurt that’s doing the same thing so she rips the tuning fork from Vanya’s hand with a jerk of her chin. Her body hurts - how long have they been training? - and she pushes toward Vanya. The other girls is stuck in her place and Cricket circles her like a predator. Vanya pulsates, but Cricket’s quick with a matching pulse that sends it rocketing back toward Vanya. She wants to tell the other girl to push, but the culmination of the last three days has left her language deficient and craving another tutoring session with Five.

Vanya seems to get the idea, though.

The next wave of energy from the shorter woman doesn’t toss Cricket back. It absolutely rockets her back toward one unpadded wall in the training room. Neither woman has time to stop it and pain rockets through Cricket’s whole body as she crashes into the heavy, cumbersome stone. Her vision flashes and she can feel her arm pulsing with pain from the gunshot wound. She wonders if Klaus still has pain pills hidden somewhere in the house but then Vanya is there, over her, brows pulled together like Diego’s were.

“Cricket, are you okay? I’m sorry, I just… My pulse was so loud and I must have lost control…” But Cricket shakes her head and pulls Vanya in for a hug.

“It wa-was guh-good.” That appeases Vanya and they end their training session. Cricket has a headache, and she’s bleeding through her shirt but she doesn't redress her wound. In fact, she hasn’t even looked at it since Diego left her in the bathroom.

Maybe Grace would help her, or maybe she would leave it go and get what she deserves.


	4. Chapter 4

Cricket ends up taking care of her wound when it’s hot and swollen in the morning. She’s still sore from training, but she takes refuge in the bathroom and makes sure - triple sure - that the door is locked before she sheds her shirt and the bloodied gauze. She winces when the cool air hits the scorched flesh that’s raised, angry and red around the gunshot wound. An infection - amazing.

What would her Mother have said? What would her mother have done?

Cricket tries to shake the thoughts off and thinks. She tries not to think about what Diego would do, but instead what she should do. She pulls a brown bottle off of the shelf, trying to sound out the words on the bottle. Medicines of any kind gave her trouble and she knows what she needs - she needs rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide - but how the hell do you spell either of those? Where does she start sounding them out? Does she start with the first or the second and what if it’s not even English and what if she gets it wrong -

She’s having an anxiety attack when someone takes the bottle from her and helps her sound out the words. It’s hydrogen peroxide - it’s what she needs - and the person is Five. Cricket wonders if it’s sick to pretend that it’s Diego dressing the wound when it’s Five. Five who, in the six or seven months since they’d stopped the Vanyocalypse, had started to fill his thirteen year old body back out. Five, who’d sworn up and down he’d seen her at the end of the word alive, but dying. Five, who had been her ally since the day she showed up at the Academy on her mission.  Five, who had helped her fill the language gaps she had due to her upbringing.

Five, who’s holding her as she cries after redressing her wound. He rubs her back like a father and, well, he is an old man. She supposes he does feel more paternal over his siblings now - not that Cricket is one of his siblings. “How about a lesson and some coffee, hm?” Cricket nods and wipes her nose on the tissue he presents her, and then he whisks them away to the kitchen. Thankfully, it’s empty.


	5. Chapter 5

“Sound it out. We’ve been over this, I don’t care if you stutter. Safe place, and all that.”

She looks at the word and knows that the ost sounds like lost without the l on the front, and that acc sounds like account but without the ount on the end. She knows the sounds, but the word is foreign to her. She’s never seen it before - Five’s been upping the difficulty on her vocabulary lessons.

“Acc...Accos-st.” She only trips over the way the s connects to the t, but she gets the words. “Accost.”

“Good. What do you think it means?” Five takes a long pull from his coffee mug and sets it aside when it’s empty. This part is the most frustrating. He won’t just give her the meaning after she’s worked out the word, but she has to work out the meaning, too. “Come on, give me anything.”

It’s like he knows why she’s afraid to speak. He doesn’t think it’s stupid, but she sure does.

“H-how muh-muh… How much mon-ney something is?”

“Hm, nope. That’s a cost.” He scribbles the two words under the first. “They look similar. Accost is to speak to someone aggressively. Like Luther and Diego talking to each other. Or, well, not talking considering Diego hasn’t said a word in… Four days now? It’s it ironic - that’s a word from last week’s lesson - that you’ve gone silent as well, Cricket?”

It’s a trap, she realizes, looking at her lesson paper. Five has trapped her and she has to answer him. He may look thirteen years old, but he’s really the closest thing she’s had to a father in years. “Y-you’re acuh-accosting me.”

“Good conjugation.”

She’s preens at the praise and the fact that she knows what conjugation means.

“And I am not. I’m asking a question. Isn’t it ironic?”

“Yes.”

“I think you should talk to him.”

“De du-doesn’t want m-me to.” She knows it’s true when the nothing settles deep in her chest again and she wraps her arms around herself. “He’s m-” She pauses to choose another word. “Upset with me.”

“Why?” Five folds his hands and tilts his head, looking like a man on a mission. All Cricket really wants to do is disappear. She’s saved by the bell when Diego enters and Five stands, posturing with dark eyes. She flickers away as soon as she realizes it’s him, letting herself fall through the floor into Pogo’s room, before making her way back to her bedroom. She doesn’t want to stay, she realizes, because she’s messed this - whatever this is - up somehow.

Cricket’s not even sure what she’s done to make Diego so angry with her, but she knows that she can’t spend the rest of her life avoiding him or the memory of the way he used to light up when he saw her. She makes the decision, hands tangled in her hair, that she’s leaving. Not forever, but at least for a week. It’s not silent, what she’s doing, but she’s quick. Efficient. She’s packed up more of her life into smaller bags and vanished before, she can do it now. At most she needs two changes of clothes, and she could probably get away with less.

Well, if she could get away with any of it. She’s shoving the clothes deeper into the bag, intent on smashing them so she could get the damned thing to zip, when Diego comes crashing into her room. His eyes are wide and frantic, and the fear in them gives her pause. But not a lot. She packs faster, trying to ignore his heavy breathing.

“You’re leaving?”

She wishes she could control her stutter like he does. She wishes she wasn’t so damn weak.

“You can’t leave. Cri-cuh-Cricket, you can’t-” He grabs her arm, fingers digging into the still swollen and infected flesh, her knees buckling out from underneath her. She pushes him off, looking like a wounded animal. “Please.” She’s never heard Diego beg anyone, not even Klaus when the latter was relapsing.

“I ca-c-... I can’t.” She can’t stay is what she wants to voice, but she can’t finish her sentence either. Diego’s pushing forward, eyes wide as he presses a deep and desperate kiss to her lips. She freezes as Diego desperately pushes against her, both of their breathing panicked and heavy. “De…”

“Yuh-you got sh-shot.” His hands are on her shoulders, his eyes never really meeting hers. They’re both stumbling over their words but in her makeshift bedroom, where the air is warm and swims with fear and intimacy, it doesn’t matter. She knows he’ll never judge her, and he knows the same. “A-and I was s-scared.” One tear rolls down his cheek and Diego brushes it away with the back of his hand. “I th-thought that if I… I… S-stopped t-talking the fuh-fear… The fear would leave. I can’t… I can’t lo-se you.” His voice breaks and Cricket begins to cry, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as her face blotches up. She pulls Diego to her, hiding her tears in his hoodie as she hugs him. She can’t speak - or maybe she’s afraid to speak - but it doesn’t matter. She and Diego have always understood each other, gotten what the other wanted to say without it having to be said.

She’s not sure she’s done crying but she’s sure he can feel her tears soaking his gray hoodie. She pulls back and bites her lip, meeting his eyes. For the first time in nearly a week she doesn’t fade from sight, instead surging up and taking up all of Diego’s sight.

Cricket kisses him, taking his face in her hands. It’s supposed to be a calm kiss, slow and soft and intimate, but they’ve seemed to be dancing around this for months. After they realize that both of them want this, want each other, the kisses turn frantic, heated, and needy. Diego only breaks the kiss to toss her bag off of her bed and replace it with their bodies, boxing her into the bed.

“Diego.” She sighs, closing her eyes as he nips at her neck, “Diego.”

For once she doesn’t use his nickname, and she doesn’t stutter when she says his full name.


	6. Chapter 6

Diego’s looking at her like she’s hung the moon, and she’s looking at him like he’s hung the sun. They’re frozen in a moment, a moment where the sun is just rising and they’re wrapped in each other and the blankets on the bed, and it’s a moment that they’re always going to remember. “I love you.” Diego says, voice soft and buttery like his eyes. She’s never seen him like this, not as long as they’ve known each other. Diego’s always been hard on the outside, like cooled chocolate with a molten flood on the inside.

She’s breathless to be able to see this side of him, especially when it’s laying in her bed.

She runs a finger down the scar on the side of his head, furrowing her brows. Her whole body feels heavy and light at the same time. Diego shivers when her finger follows the scar back, too. “Huh-how did this hap-happen?” Her answer is a kiss, Diego’s intimacy craving seemingly insatiable. She asks the question again, wiggling closer and pulling the blanket tighter.

“It seems like I got it in another life. Before Hargreeves kicked the bucket, and all of this the world is ending bullshit happened. It was a mission, just after Ben died.” Cricket kisses his chin, scratching down his side to keep him talking, so that he knows he’s safe, “We were all distracted and we, well, none of us should have been out. But the old bastard demanded it, just like he demanded everything else.”

“Did you ge-get the buh-bad guy?” She teases, grinning crookedly. Diego presses his nose into her cheek, inhaling shakily.

“It was my own knife.”

The implication is not lost on her and Cricket drops the subject like it’s burnt her. She pulls Diego closer, if it’s even possible, and buries her face in his chest. She knows - somehow, deep in her gut - that he’s crying. Or close to it. She practices her words for close to an hour, laying there in the growing light of the day. She ponders, briefly, just before she speaks, whether or not Diego is even still awake. “De, I think I’m in love with you.”

Earlier in the morning she knows he said he loves her, but they’re so different. She doesn't know a lot about language, but she knows that. To love someone is to accept them, but to be in love with them changes things. It changes everything. He doesn’t reply and she wonders if she’s overstepped, pushed him too far, but then his pushes himself up onto his elbow and gazes down at her, all dark eye and intense gaze down on her. She wonders what she looks like: she knows her hair is splayed around her in a mess of tangles and her lips are probably swollen and bruised. She wonders if she’s beautiful this way and pulls the blanket closer to her neck. Diego puts his hand up like he’s going to stop her, but instead cups the side of her face.

“I’m in love with you,” He rumbles, “I’m so in love with you it’s fuckin’ crazy, Cricket.”

He kisses her and it’s like the world is ending all over again.


End file.
